


Happy Birthday, Duke Thomas

by salvadore



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bat Family, Character Study, Gen, Implied Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/pseuds/salvadore
Summary: Happy holidays, Abbyromana! Thank you for your lovely prompts and the opportunity to write some Duke centric Batfam. I tried to stay close to those prompts, hopefully you like it!





	Happy Birthday, Duke Thomas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Abbyromana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abbyromana/gifts).



> Happy holidays, Abbyromana! Thank you for your lovely prompts and the opportunity to write some Duke centric Batfam. I tried to stay close to those prompts, hopefully you like it!

The night before his birthday, Duke Thomas is kept awake by stressful, intangible dreams of falling.

They aren't the typical topic of his dreams. Not like nightmares about his parents. Wherein questions of where they are and if they're still alive manifest. He has the typical dreams though. Such as the one about being in class in only his underwear. That's been recurring ever since Bruce broached the topic of college.

Falling, however. That's new.

It doesn't help that each time he wakes up, Duke expects to be back in his old bed not in Wayne Manor.

For all that Duke feels like he's adjusted to life in the manor there's always a few seconds of disorientation upon waking. It takes the touch of cool sheets on a bed far bigger than he needs. And the clatter of Damian purposely making noise from the hall. And the rap of Alfred’s knuckle on the door to really remind Duke where he is. And to calm the sudden rush of adrenaline.

He imagines when he wakes in the morning it will feel much the same, unknown and disconcerting. But he tries once more to fall fitfully to sleep.

-

One moment Duke is asleep and in the next he's aware of a hand pressing gently down on his chest. He startles.

The clock on the bedside reads 4am in bright red LED. And Cass is smiling down at him through the dark. She presses a finger to her lips before nodding her head to the large bay window of his room.

Heartbeat still racing from the unexpected wake up, Duke follows Cass to the window. It faces out onto Gotham in the twilight hours. The city is almost pretty from the hill, Duke thinks. And it reminds him of the neighborhood his family lived in before Gotham. How at the holidays these two houses would compete for most fantastic light display. It was gaudy and over-the-top - not unlike Gotham - but impossible to drive past without needing a second glance.

“Come on, Duke,” Cass whispers as she opens the window. “I want to show you something.”

They take two of the Robin-cycles into the city. Implicitly, Duke follows Cass through the streets until they reach an unspoken direction. They take to the rooftops ten blocks from city center and race across the smaller, five story complexes that make up the area. Cass is pure speed, taking leaps and rolls across the rooftops with enviable prowess.

Duke pushes himself to keep up and leaps across the alley too. As he lands he falls into a forward roll, and springs back up to his feat without losing momentum; surprisingly, he's not yet breathless. And when he looks up, Cass is smiling at him. She's standing on another roof, farther ahead than Duke realized. But she's giving him a thumbs up. Duke smiles back. As he races and leaps once more and once again hitting his mark exactly pride swells in his chest.

Duke whoops - just once. And maybe he throws his hands in the air. He feels light, and up ahead he can see Cass laughing.

Now grinning at him, Cass shouts, "Birthday boy! We're not there yet!"

-

It's hours before they return to the manor. They're only forced inside by the break of daylight and early morning commuters.

Cass and Duke part ways in the cave. She presses a hand to his arm and wishes him a 'Happy Birthday,' still smiling as sincerely as before.

Then Duke pulls his weary limbs up the steps of the cave as exhaustion starts to hit him.

Duke finds Tim slouching at the kitchen table. There's a tablet on the table in front of him, but Duke’s not sure if he's reading or sleeping. The screen goes dark but Tim doesn't immediately wake it up. He sits still for a second, leaning his chin into his hand. His eyes look closed from where Duke stands.

But then Tim pushes a second coffee cup, still steaming, toward the place setting across from him.

“Good morning,” Tim says before his mouth goes wide for a large yawn. He looks as tired as Duke feels.

“Thanks,” Duke says, falling into the open chair and pulling the coffee cup toward him. The steam warms his face a little, and the cup feels hot against his freezing fingers.

“Your birthday present isn't going to be near and present danger, right?” Duke asks.

Tim chuckles.

“I have too much homework to do, and a whole new coordination plan to write for the Titans. I'm afraid, it's only the coffee.” Tim taps at the screen.

The keyboard makes soft tick-tacking sounds as Tim works and Duke takes a second to close his eyes.

He drifts, thinks about napping away the afternoon. He doesn't know what else might be planned. But Tim cuts the silence to add, “But I can't speak for anyone else,” and Duke feels wide awake again.

-

Duke manages to avoid Bruce, Damian, and Alfred throughout the day. He feels somehow unequipped to hear them wish him a happy birthday, more so than the other kids. When night falls, he strikes out alone on patrol as a safety precaution.

He almost makes it to the end of his birthday unscathed when he intercepts a call for back-up from Nightwing. And then, as if Tim's words were a bad omen, everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. Duke finds himself hauling most of Dick's weight as they escape into an alley.

The sounds of gunfire follows them from the illicit poker game they’d stumbled into while looking for Scarecrow. He hadn’t been there, but at least half a dozen of Penguin’s men were. Along with twice as many other people with a grudge against the Bat.

It would’ve been fine if there had been more than one exit.

“I'm fine,” Dick says. Except he's leaning heavily on Duke. Luckily for Dick, Duke doesn't fall for the patented _Grayson bravado_ (a term he first heard from Tim but thinks Jason coined). At least not like he might have once. He'd seen the size of the guy that cracked a chair across Dick’s back.

"This is Signal to cave," Duke says. He ducks into a doorway and presses Dick between him and the closed door, as obscured by the shadows as possible.

"Mission status," B's voice replies, gruff and on mission.

"We ..." Duke starts to say before he trails off. There's a moment of empty line as he watches Dick touch the back of his own head. Duke waits, expecting his fingers to come away bloody. Or for Dick to pitch forward any second.

When Duke speaks again he comes back sounding a little more firm. "The mission went sideways. Nightwing was hit. Relocating to nearest safe-house."

"Location, " B asks, tone somehow more brusque.

Duke rattles off the coordinates. He watches the lens of Dick's domino disappear as he squints his eyes shut, brow knitting in pain.

"Spoiler here," a new voice intercedes on the line. "I'm en-route."

-

When Stephanie gets there, it takes the two of them to carry Dick between them to Leslie Thompson's clinic.

Leslie clicks her tongue at the sight of them. She looks irritable, and ready to give Dick a lecture as she pulls a pen light from her coat pocket. She shoos Duke and Steph away but Duke hears her say, "Look to the left Richard. And let's hope you haven't given yourself a concussion."

Steph and Duke wait together on the roof. The nearest traffic light changes and there's the rumble of engines and vehicles down there. A car backfires. And for a moment Duke has forgotten it's his birthday. He's too busy complaining about Dick's lack of self-preservation.

Steph knocks their shoulders together. She says, "Don't take it personally. They're _all_ bad at being taken care of."

"I don't understand," Duke says. "He dodged right in front of the blow. He didn't need to do that."

"I hear that this is what it's like having brothers," Steph says.

Duke's not entirely certain what to do with that. It hangs in the air between them for moment - this proposal that any of the Wayne kids or Bruce himself could be equated to a "typical family." Duke knows Steph meant it as a joke, but it hits home harder than it should. 

He looks down at his helmet where he's holding it in his lap. He looks at the visor and sees his own face reflected back. For a second, a thought slips in. That maybe Steph means that this is what it feels like to have a safety net. Duke squashes it though. He trusts them in the field, they've earned that. And he really likes all of them. But labeling it seems like too big a step right now. 

After a while of mutual silence filled only by the sounds of Gotham at night, Steph knocks their shoulders together again.

“Hey," she says. "Happy Birthday, Duke.”

He looks at her surprised. He'd almost forgotten himself. 

“How did you know?”

“I don’t know if it was Alfred, or maybe Dick's idea,” Steph says. “But B had a surprise party planned for you.”

“I should’ve just let Jason take you out drinking like he wanted too,” Dick says from the doorway to the roof, startling them. "The party was admittedly my idea. Keeping you out this late and getting injured?"

Dick looks sheepish as he stands there, one arm in a sling and a bruise blossoming on one cheek. He shrugs, and then looks like he regrets it.

-

They get back to the manor just before 3am. Duke’s birthday is officially over but the big banner hanging in the front room would beg to differ. It reads, ‘Happy Birthday, Duke,’ in perfectly painted letters; it’s clearly, carefully, homemade. Duke suspects Alfred.

The fire is roaring, keeping the room warm and lowly lit. It’s not a surprise that Tim and Damian are each asleep, both still in costume except for their masks. In the far corner, Jason and Cass are playing a game of chess that Jason appears to be losing by the number of pieces on Cass's side. Bruce is helping Alfred put foil over the plates on the coffee table. They're speaking low enough that Duke can't hear but it's domestic. And mundane. That pang he got on the roof with Steph - he'd thought it was all guilt, but maybe a little bit of it is want.

From beside the fireplace, Titus woofs at them. It's a low snuffle of a sound, a greeting. It gets Cass's attention.

“Duke,” Cass says. She smiles. Heads start to turn and even Tim stretches. He wakes up enough to wave at Duke before reaching over to poke at Damian to rouse him too.

“Sorry I kept the birthday boy,” Dick says. He indicates his injuries and adds, “We got a little waylaid.”

"As I was not born yesterday, I planned for just such a possibility, Master Richard," Alfred says. "Happy birthday, Master Duke."

There's an out of synch chorus of " _Happy Birthday, Duke"_ that concludes with Damian's voice, solid and late behind the rest. He still looks tired but Tim has prodded him to sit up and he's making eye contact. 

Damian adds, "Welcome home," and his skin is flushed but Duke doesn't think it's from the fire. And hearing that from Robin, the kid that pretty much started it all? It rings of belonging in it's own way. Duke remembers walking him home after the fight with the Court of Owls. He remembers the surge of protectiveness in him and thinks. Well, he thinks suddenly in terms of 'little brother,' and 'home' despite having tried not to all day. 

When Duke looks around and smiles it's to cover the way he's thinking, 'oh no, these people are my family.' Not because it's bad but because between them, there's very little concern for personal safety in any one of them. He feels fond and thinks they're lucky to have him.


End file.
